UDK highlighting along the triangled edges, and at weird angles.

BARDLER

I saw this pop up at some point on polycount, but could not dig up the thread. I am getting this strange highlighting on my meshes that is following the triangle edge, and not the proper edge.


I am using the July 2012 version of UDK.
The mesh was exported out of Maya 2011, with smoothing groups, tangents and binormals, and smooth mesh checked on.
Imported into UDK with Explicit Normals, and Import Tangents.
The normal was baked in xNormal, and triangulated before baking.
The normals and specular show up fine in Marmoset with the same FBX export settings. So I think it has to do with the importing into UDK? Maybe.

Any ideas?

Quack!

This is definitely a baking error. Can you show the low poly model with smoothing groups only, and a picture of your UV map wireframe?

BARDLER

Thanks Quack for pointing that out. I took a closer look in Marmoset with the specular sharpness jacked way up and it showed the same shading issue. I reset all my normals, setup my smoothing groups again, re-baked, and it looks fine. There is one small problem area still, but its not that noticeable, but its because of my poor construction of my lowpoly in that area.

Thanks for the help!

Quack!

Well if asking you to show your model and uv constitutes as help, them I am glad I could be of service! :]

Glad you figured it out.

BARDLER

So if anybody stumbles upon this thread on the old google machine. Here is a bunch of key words.
"Maya" "Maya 2011" "Triangulated" "UDK" "Normal Maps" "Normals"

I found the root of the problem that I was having. So in Maya, at least hte2011 version, triangulating you mesh fucks up your smoothing groups. In order to make sure Maya doesn't mess up your stuff make sure you lock your normals BEFORE you triangulate. This will make you avoid the painful process of resetting up smoothing groups, and rebaking all your meshes

Hope this will help somebody in need one day.

Kon Artist

Maya still does this in 13 sometimes. If it does... just click an edge that is already soft and make it soft again. The model NRMs will pop back to the way they should be.